Library & Research: Case Study

I taught middle-school math for seven years, and like all middle school teachers, my challenges were keeping my students engaged, differentiating for individual needs and learning styles, and making sure they had the problem-solving and critical-thinking skills they needed to succeed in high school. Also, my students came from a wide range of backgrounds. I sometimes have students whose only meal each day was a school lunch and they shared that in the same classroom with students who had already picked out new cars for their sixteenth birthday. Many of my students had negative preconceptions about math and a low level of interest.

Solution

After Hurricane Katrina, a 21S grant allowed me to upgrade my classroom with an interactive whiteboard and an interactive response system. Students loved the interactive response hand-held devices, which look a lot like cell phones. They just loved any excuse to be able to text-message during school. And I didn’t have to wonder what mistakes they’d made or whether they’d missed out on a major concept. Every response from every student is automatically displayed on the screen, so I could adjust my teaching immediately. When students expressed interest in how I created my Website, I taught them how to do it to help them publish their work on their math homework. Now those students help other teachers build Websites. One of the most popular technologies allowed students to record on-demand videos and instantly upload them online for others to view. They used this technology to create videos explaining how they solved math problems.

Impact

After Hurricane Katrina, a 21S grant allowed me to upgrade my classroom with an interactive whiteboard and an interactive response system. Students loved the interactive response hand-held devices, which look a lot like cell phones. They just loved any excuse to be able to text-message during school. And I didn’t have to wonder what mistakes they’d made or whether they’d missed out on a major concept. Every response from every student is automatically displayed on the screen, so I could adjust my teaching immediately.

When students expressed interest in how I created my Website, I taught them how to do it to help them publish their work on their math homework. Now those students help other teachers build Websites. One of the most popular technologies allowed students to record on-demand videos and instantly upload them online for others to view. They used this technology to create videos explaining how they solved math problems.